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XTIDE tech support thread

modem7 said:
The 5155 contains a 5160 motherboard. All three revisions of the 5160 BIOS/POST do the checksum check.
It could be by coincidence that the 5160 found the ROM contents to checksum to 00.
Click to expand...

It may be prudent here to mention that my 5155 does not have the original IBM board in it unfortunately, but a DTK 8MHz 8088 equipped mobo...
 
Minerva10210 said:
Code: 
-d d000:0
D000:0000 55 AA 10 E9 06 0A 00 00-31 31 2F 32 38 2F 31 30   U.......11/28/10
D000:0010 58 54 49 44 45 31 31 30-2D 3D 58 54 49 44 45 20   XTIDE110-=XTIDE 
D000:0020 55 6E 69 76 65 72 73 61-6C 20 42 49 4F 53 20 28   Universal BIOS (
D000:0030 58 54 29 3D 2D 00 00 76-31 2E 31 2E 35 20 28 31   XT)=-..v1.1.5 (1
D000:0040 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   ................
D000:0050 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   ................
D000:0060 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   ................
D000:0070 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   ................
-

So looking at the BIOS dump, it would seem like it started the flash process, but only got a few bytes written and then gave up?
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what it looked like. Offset 40h there should be a continuation of human readable text data. The date the BIOS was built is in parenthesis comes next, right where those FF's start. If you drag the XT_IDE.BIN file or whatever it was you were trying to flash in, into a hex editor in windows, you should see what the data is supposed to look like.

It would be interesting if you go back into debug and press D some more to continue dumping more data out. Does data appear again at a higher address? The fact that the data dies out at address 40h could tell us that there is an address line that it not working.

More questions:
What's the background of this card? Is it one I sold to you as a kit, or did I build it for you? Has the eeprom ever worked, was it ever fully programmed? If it came from me, either in kit or completed form, the eeprom should have had data on it.

Another test you can do is if you can find another 8k ROM somewhere, try putting it into the XTIDE and doing the same dump in debug. If that ROM too goes to FF's at offset 40h, then your XTIDE is broken. If the ROM looks fine, then your EEPROM is suspect.

Edit: Another thing to try, maybe, is can you get your mobo to drop down to 4.77MHz instead of 8?
 
hargle said:
More questions:
What's the background of this card? Is it one I sold to you as a kit, or did I build it for you? Has the eeprom ever worked, was it ever fully programmed? If it came from me, either in kit or completed form, the eeprom should have had data on it.

Another test you can do is if you can find another 8k ROM somewhere, try putting it into the XTIDE and doing the same dump in debug. If that ROM too goes to FF's at offset 40h, then your XTIDE is broken. If the ROM looks fine, then your EEPROM is suspect.

Edit: Another thing to try, maybe, is can you get your mobo to drop down to 4.77MHz instead of 8?
Click to expand...

Thanks Hargle - will check some of the items over the weekend.

The card I have was bought blank from you - so never been programmed...
 
Check the soldering job on the EEPROM socket carefully--for some reason, my board was particularly hard to solder. You might have a cold solder joint.

Failing that, find a 2764 programmed EPROM that has known contents (borrow one from another card of any sort). Stick it in the XTIDE and see if you can see the entire contents of the EPROM.

If not, check your soldering again.
 
Minerva10210 said:
The card I have was bought blank from you - so never been programmed...
Click to expand...

Well, I do actually bulk program all my eeproms before they ship out. This gives the end-user a warm fuzzy when they first apply power to the device, they should see the card light the screen when the ROM loads. At this point it's impossible to say if the data we do see is from me, or from a partial flash upgrade.

Anyway, yes, the next step is to try another eeprom in the XTIDE and/or try the atmel part in another device, just to see if it is readable.
 
Alright, I'm interested in getting one of these boards fabbed. However, in the KiCad files there is a -full and a regular XT-IDE.pro and I am not entirely sure which one to send to the fab. If someone could shed light on this I would appreciate it.
 
XTIDE rev 1 is sold out, and we have stopped production.

XTIDE rev 2 is in prototype at the moment. I have PCBs and am starting to put together a BOM of parts to order from Jameco, hopefully to be done this week. I can then attempt to build up a card or two for debugging. If things go well, we can hopefully turn the spigot back on in a couple months. Real life this summer has been extremely busy and this project has back burnered. Pop me a PM and I can get you in the queue. There are about 15 people ahead of you.
 
Hi,
Did you get the information on the Jameco part #'s for the XT-IDE V2 BOM?

Any volunteers to do build and test? Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
I am still attempting to put together the BOM, real life has consumed most of my time lately. (yes, got the part#s andrew, thanks!)

Neither Jameco nor mouser have 100% of the parts we need, so I always end up ordering from both in order to fill any XTIDE kits.

I will be ordering all the parts for all 5 PCBs that I have right now. I can resell those to folks handy with soldering and debugging when I've kitted them up. I have 1 volunteer so far, but it's all kinda moot until I get all the parts together.
No idea how much these cards will cost yet. Not even a ballpark estimate.

Also, this isn't tech support. I'd like to move this discussion elsewhere if we want to continue.
 
whenever you are able to get the kits or completed boards ready (preferably completed, i don't trust myself completely with soldering), i'm definitely interested in getting another to go along with that original prototype board i got from you so long ago, which btw still works fine! it's in my 5150 which is turned on and running as i write this.
 
I got a compact flash adapter and tried to get DOS 5 running from it. I was getting random results with both bios v1.1.4 and 5. It would either...
- Boot with no problem.
- Fail to ID the drive.
- ID the drive but fail to find the boot sector.
- ID the drive and boot sector but fail to find a DOS file.
- Throw an FFh error.

I looked up the FFh error and saw back on page 20 of this thread that EddieDX4 had luck by disabling late initiation. I tried that and now the card hangs on boot. Pressing CTRL does not bypass the XTIDE. Basically the 5150 locks up anytime the XTIDE is installed so I can't reflash. The pic shows where the boot hangs.
IMG_3299.jpg...IMG_3300.jpg...IMG_3301.jpg
 
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twodogs said:
Pressing CTRL does not bypass the XTIDE. Basically the 5150 locks up anytime the XTIDE is installed so I can't reflash.
Click to expand...
Remove the jumper on the XTIDE that enables the BIOS chip. Boot the machine. Whilst the machine is running, replace the jumper. Now flash the BIOS.
 
Thank you for that. I've reflashed and can get the machine to boot, but my problems remain. Its difficult to troubleshoot because it seems to do something different each time I turn it on. I wondered if I had a malfunctioning CF card or adapter, so I swapped them into a Pentium III machine where it booted into DOS 5 like lightning. When I moved it back to the 5150 I had the same random problems. I built my XTIDE card in the summer of 2010 when there was a batch of bad EEPROMs. Could that explain this behavior?
 
Try replacing R6 with a zero-ohm resistor (or a bit of wire) and placing jumper K1 at position 'L'.

The original board ties CSEL to ground via 10k, but the 10k resistor should be (and will be) in the drive (or CF adapter, in this case), resulting in ambiguous CSEL voltage levels at the drive.
 
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>there was a batch of bad EEPROMs. Could that explain this behavior?
If the flash is successful, and the machine shows the XTIDE boot menu, then your eeprom is just fine.
 
Hargle - I thought it was a long shot on the EEPROM.

Pearce_jj - I think you might be onto something. That said, I thought I had this card working correctly several times before, so I'm leery of declaring final victory. Still, the initial results are very promising. I wrapped some wire around the resistor legs and tried about 5 hard and 5 soft reboots. Each time the XTIDE menu came up with the correct drives and it booted to CF without complaint. The card also figures out in a split second that there is no slave drive where before it would take a long pause. I'll exercise the computer a bit more, then get out the soldering iron and make the mod permanent.

twodogs
 
Glad it's working. FWIW I suspect the CSEL issue is the cause of many detection problems with this card. And the reason it doesn't work with cable select mode obviously (yours will with that mod in place).
 
I did maybe 10 more boots and it looks good. I pulled out the resistor and soldered in the wire. How did you come up with this mod - is there another thread someplace about it?

Nice work,
Twodogs
 
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